Sunday 1/26/25
I should start this one by saying you're going to perhaps think I've screwed up here with the excerpt from the losing side of this prose off that you're about to see, because surely this can't be real, but it is real, I didn't screw up, and I encourage you to click on the link for that story so you can 1. Confirm that it's real and 2. The whole thing is really as stupid as the part you're about to see.
This is so bad, these people are so full of shit, their system is corrupt, that I don't even really know what to say sometimes. Or I do, and I don't feel like it, because there's nothing more twisted or insane, and it's draining documenting that. The whole system is as fucked up as anything can be. But I will say a few things before we get to the thrashing.
George Saunders is one of the gods for the people of the publishing system. He has no ability whatsoever. But that doesn't mean--in truth, it helps with the gifting--that George Saunders hasn't been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship--and we know what an on the up-and-up, totally meritorious thing that is, with the likes of two of the most boring writers in the world in Laura van den Berg and Paul Yoon both receiving a Guggenheim on the same day as wife and husband because the Guggenheim people thought that would be neat and uphold their closed, caste-system anti-values--as well as a MacArthur genius grant.
That's right--we got us an official genius here. You ready for some genius prose? That's going to be awesome, right? Get set to be blown away. Because this should be stunning, no? We're about to bask in the light of a great talent. But let's not stint the man on his honorifics, though.
Saunders also won the Booker Prize. We're all big McSweeney's fans here, right? Remember that entry about them? He's regularly in there. Harper's pretends to love him, too. Some nice Harper's entries on here lately. Saunders has won the National Magazine Award for fiction four times for writing the likes of what you're about to see from The New Yorker. This is what he does. You ready? You excited? This is from a short story called "Elliot Spencer." Masterpiece, baby.
Today is to be Parts of the Parts of my
Sure, Jer Please do Point at parts of me while saying the name of it off our list of Words Worth Knowing.
Agespot
Finger
Wrist
At wrist Jer says, This one’s been broken, seems like.
Then pokes.
Ouch? he says.
Yes, I say.
Groin
Waist
You were no spring chicken, says Jerry.
I do not understand what you just said, please explain, I say.
You were not young, Jerry says. Your body is not the body of a young person.
Oh, that’s cool, I say. That’s cool, Jer.
Jer shakes his head his certain way
Meaning: 89, you crack my ass up.
Long ago, perhaps one week, we had Explain Time, due to figure of speech crack my ass up All asses are precracked, turns out, even mine, which Jer helped me learn by taking of phonephoto.
Arm
Leg
Navel
Scar, on Stomach
Penis
All morning we continue learning and learning until no part of me remain.
And at night all night as every night a tape playing in here helps improve me our Syntax.
Have we done bellow? Jer says.
Makes loud startling sound.
Now you, Jer says.
I bellow.
So, what we are going to be bellowing at? Jer says. Whoever is standing across from us.
Whoever is standing across from us, I say.
Feel free to bellow words or phrases, he says.
HELLO! I bellow.
You are always so good at everything, 89, he says.
Then pours into me, so generous, by saying them, some words I may wish to bellow:
Bastard
Turd
Creep
Idiot
May we do Defining? I say.
Uh, sure, Jer says.
Turns out, all mean same:
Bastard = individual standing across from us.
Turd = individual standing across from us.
Creep = individual standing across from us.
Idiot = individual standing across from us.
89, I have always so far called you 89, Jer says. But tomorrow you are to become Greg. How’s that?
I am Greg? I say.
Will be, Jer says. Tomorrow. Tomorrow is, guess what? Job One Day.
Exciting! Have been waiting long for Job One Day Job One turns out per Jer is: high and noble as all getout Per Jer: I will stand for freedom For poor and sick Will defend weak From oppressors.
More Defining, with help of HandiPics:
Freedom = cartoon bird flies above land, smile on beak.
Poor = sad child, pockets sticking out of pants.
Sick = thin guy in bed, “X”s for eyes.
Weak = guy in desert, trying to reach water glass, failing.
Oppressor = tall guy with monster face sticks stick into body of weak as, in four HandiPics in row, weakgets more weakwith each poke.
Why do oppressors wish to poke weak? I say.
They’re bad, says Jer. Have to be stopped.
From doing that, I say.
Correcto, says Jer. And you’re a big part of the solution.
What the what! as Jer might say.
Wow. That's amazing, man. You're so talented. What a gift you have. Such outstanding fiction. No wonder you win all of those awards and are hooked up by all of these system people. Who wouldn't want to read that incredible story? I think we all know a brilliant, prose genius when we see one. "What the what." Damn. That's good. No wonder you see all of those New Yorker tote bags (in certain cities). I'm sure those people with them definitely read and loved that. I'm sure they're not just carrying those tote bags in hopes that others think they must be smart.
Returning to reality.
Do you believe these people and their system? Best fiction there is right there. That's it. New Yorker fiction. Guggenheim winner. A man who was given three-quarters of a million dollars for being a genius--can anything be more absurd?--by the MacArthur people. Regular fiction contributor to The New Yorker.
Ah, New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, what a joke of an editor and a human you are.
Hey, New Yorker editor David Remnick: enabling any sexual harassment and stalking these days? Too bad I don't write you anymore so you can't steal another idea, right? Remember when you helped yourself to that jazz one? I watched in real-time as you were taking it. I'd log in, and there was your IP address as you dipped into what I sent you yet again, and then, lo and behold, out came your piece based on my idea. A great jazz writer in me, and a man out of his depth who'd never written about jazz in his life in you. And a thief.
Maybe you're going to write another oily, obsequious Beatles piece? We both know you're not good at those. You know how good I am. You don't like that, do you?
And while we're at it: The things people write me about you tell me 1. People really don't like you. People who have been in that office, too and 2. You are every bit the immoral person I have long known you to be.
But back to the prose off.
Look at that all-out shit above. Total shit. But you know what? There's more to be accomplished in looking at actual fecal matter than there is reading this. You might, or instance, notice blood, and you should get that checked out.
There isn't a single reason to read what we just saw George Saunders, unless it's to do a prose off and reveal--for the latest time--just how corrupt people like New Yorker fiction editors Deborah Treisman, Willing Davidson, David Wallace, and Cressida Leyshon--and, of course, Davd Remnick, overseeing it all--really are.
Because none of these jackasses sat around a table and said, "Wow, we have an amazing story form George Saunders here, isn't this incredible writing?" and discussed why it was so incredible with each other.
You frauds. And I'm just going to keep putting all of this out there until it changes. Remember, you took it here after years of me being the recipient of your obvious--there's nothing more obvious--discrimination.
Can you even imagine writing something stupider than the above? And here, in this system, from the right person, the right card-carrying member of the system, that gets termed the best writing in the world, lauded, rewarded, awarded.
Do you think it's even humanly possible to believe that doesn't suck?
As I was getting the spacing of the above excerpt correct--I'm fastidious--it occurred to me that I could put nothing in the space of where my work goes in these things, and that would win the prose off. Nothing--as in, here's a blank space--is better than this. The absence of writing is better than this.
These people, these idiots, frauds, jackasses, all of the bad writers, all of the system clowns, say, "People don't read," blaming people, the masses they need to think are beneath them, when they are serving up this shit and telling each other that they're smart.
And there's nothing else. How many prose offs have we done? There is no good writing. There's no one who can do it. All of these people are the same. They go to the same schools, the same MFA programs, they tell each other to do this, they do it, they teach others to do it, and not a single one of them can write a lick.
George Saunders teaches in an MFA program. So you sit in a room in front of this guy, and he's like, "This is how you write, yeah, listen to me, I'm so good at this, I'm the guy who wrote 'What the what," I know, incredible, right?"
And that's what these dilettantes do. And they do it without any outside interference to say, "Whoa, that's so laughably bad," or "What a disgusting system of classism you have there." Any prying eyes.
The millions of people who claim to be writers don't read any of this. They don't read. They don't care. They just want validation, and there's no legit way they can get it, based on actual, tangible ability, but here everything is fake and fantasy, and you can pretend to be whatever and the whole thing is just insanity, insane broken people, lying, saying things that no one actually thinks or believes, no one is serious, no one works, no one tries to get better, no one knows anything, there's no talent.
Then it's just other nonsense. Box-checking, being the right kind of person, color, gender, schools, money. Money, money, money. Do you have the whiff of money about you? That better not be a plastic spoon. Only silver here.
Imagine if these prose offs were reversed? That is, if these people wrote what I wrote and I wrote what they wrote, and I was acting like they couldn't measure up to what I was doing? Do you know how hard I'd be mocked and ridiculed?
That'd be sane, right? Whereas, this is just insanity. It's not that anyone seeing this doesn't know that. It's that no one cares on their own. People outside of the system who don't read, and people inside the system who don't really read anything either. You think anyone in publishing read the above story by George Saunders and thought, "That's great"?
The hell they did. That never happened. Not once. Not with a single person.
How sickening is this?
And if it seems like I'm the only one who knows, that's because I'm close to being the only person who cares. Who is actually looking with open eyes. And who cares about writing. And what great writing can actually do. And what writing that is more than great writing can do. Writing that, because it's by me, because I am not one of these people, is writing that these people don't want the world to see, because of the gap between it and everything that anyone else in their system can do.
We have all of these people doing the same crap, and then we have this one person all they way over here, and they cannot permit anyone knowing that there's someone completely separate on a different level, while they're all on the same one. Doing the likes of what you just read, and what you see from these people in prose off after prose off after prose off. And I'm just going to keep putting them up here as long as I have to.
If you're one of these people, it's really up to you when this stops.
But we're here for an obvious beat down which exposes these people for what they are, what they're doing, in the most obvious fashion possible--by which I mean we're doing a prose off--so let's finish that off, yes?
This is from something by the person these people seek to lock out because he can do what none of them can do, and what none of their naked emperors like George Saunders can do.
I never realized how often I looked at Rachel to try and read her face, to catch the life that was in her eyes, until I saw how much she looked at Thomas, which made me think about what else I might have looked at a lot without knowing. It’s weird what you might not see right in front of you, or inside of you, unless you stopped and told yourself what it was.
We were in Mr. Margolis’s science class and he said that this week would be all about ATP and how humans make energy, which was the most important thing in the world, because without energy, you weren’t anything. You were “bupkis” was the actual word he used. Plain nothing. The hole in the donut, he continued, and then proceeded to illustrate the point by sticking his finger through the hole of the old-fashioned he was about to eat (the cafeteria was flooded that day so it was like a lunch field trip) which caused a couple of boys on the JV hockey team to laugh.
I stole a look at Rachel who was busy looking at Thomas with this pained expression on her face, as if she was worried that this talk about energy and not existing would be a sore subject for him, given that he was dead and and all.
Mr. Margolis had a knack for making it sound like we were bound for boot camp, which is exactly what he did when he wrapped up with what he considered fair warning by saying, “Now this won’t be easy, ATP never has been and never will be, so you’ll need to buckle down.”
People groaned, but not Rachel, who decided it was time for one of her patented Rachel lines.
“Feel the learn!” she declared, her voice full of scrappy cheer as everyone groaned some more on account of the terrible pun for “Feel the burn!” as if Rachel had been in a 1980s jazzercise video the class before instead of math. She kept looking across the aisle at Thomas with this mixed expression of hope and yearning. He let out a snigger—a knowing snigger of offhand, but real, respect—which was the first time we’d heard him laugh in what amounted to a triumph for Rachel who settled back into her chair, a softened expression of relief on her face that the stormy crisis she feared hadn’t come to pass.
It struck me down in this part of me that I hadn’t known was there, but also up at the surface, that someone does not save the day so much as they allow the day to keep happening. People claim that the world keeps going no matter what, which is something they usually say shortly after a person close to them dies and they learn firsthand that the world didn’t pause for a single second or fly the flag it doesn’t have at half-mast so you can at least look at it and think, “She’s lowered for you today.”
They understand, I guess, because they have to, but they’re still thinking, “How could you, world?” Life goes on, which isn’t the same as that you do. Something or someone has to allow the day to keep happening. That’s not the same as there being that day, because it was going to be there anyway, with or without you. Say what you will about clocks and calendars, but they’ll only carry you so far. If you’re really there, it will be because of someone. Maybe that someone is you, maybe you get a little help. Maybe you do the helping. And the day is allowed to keep happening.
Thomas took out his notebook the same as everyone else who was about to learn how energy gets made and class continued like classes always seem to do, but that’s not all it was. I looked at Rachel with as much appreciation I could muster on my face, hoping she wouldn’t think it was for her pun, exactly. But if that’s what wanted to think, that was fine, too.
That's hilarious. The gap. How could you have a bigger disparity in ability? And it's so goddamn plain. Which is the beauty of these prose offs. They transcend subjectivity. Think of how rare that is.
In miniature:
They’re bad, says Jer. Have to be stopped.
versus
People claim that the world keeps going no matter what, which is something they usually say shortly after a person close to them dies and they learn firsthand that the world didn’t pause for a single second or fly the flag it doesn’t have at half-mast so you can at least look at it and think, “She’s lowered for you today.”
What can you even say?
I'll be doing this as long as I have to.
